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Vergangenheitsbewältigung

Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The Legacy of National Socialism. German deaths - Civilians. Luftkrieg – every city over 50.000 bombed - estimated deaths: 450.000 - 600.000 Flight from East & Expulsions: Estimated 300.000 deaths during flight from advancing German army in East Prussia 1945

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Vergangenheitsbewältigung

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  1. Vergangenheitsbewältigung The Legacy of National Socialism

  2. German deaths - Civilians • Luftkrieg – every city over 50.000 bombed - estimated deaths: 450.000 - 600.000 • Flight from East & Expulsions: • Estimated 300.000 deaths during flight from advancing German army in East Prussia 1945 • Estimated 14 mio expellee Germans between 1945 and 1950 • Estimated 2 mio women raped mainly by SU soldiers • Estimated 140.000 women die as consequence of rape

  3. German deaths - Soldiers • Estimated 3.2 Million dead soldiers • 11 Million POW’s (3.3 in SU, 42% of whom die)

  4. German expellees after WWII (‘Heimatvertriebene’)

  5. The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, 30 Jan 1945 • Ex cruise ship marked as military vessel • Transporting refugees from East Prussia • Sunk on Baltic coast by Soviet submarine • Over 9000 dead

  6. Nazi Victims • Holocaust (6 Million Jews, Sinti & Roma, Homosexuals) • Death camps in Poland (Todeslager) • Konzentrationslager in Germany (KZ) with 1.6 Mio detainees and 450.000 documented deaths • ‘Vernichtung durch Arbeit’ • ‘Euthanasia’ – ‘Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens’ • Political prisoners (communists & socialists)

  7. Issues arising for Germany • Guilt (individual/ collective) • Responsibility (individual/ collective) • Denial & Repression (Avoidance) • Damages - ‘Wiedergutmachung’ • ‘Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit’ • Vergangenheitsbewältigung

  8. Issues for Germany • ‘Opfer’: • Victim • Sacrifice • Who is a victim? Who is a perpetrator? • What is a victim? What is a perpetrator? • Is victim a psychological or political category? • Remembrance: How do nations remember their war dead?

  9. Alexander & Margarethe Mitscherlich • Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern (1967) • Question: Why Germans so little empathy with Nazi victims? • Thesis: Germans loved Hitler – should have mourned loss of Hitler • Germans failed to mourn Hitler – instead withdrew emotional energies from themselves and their past and channelled them into Wirtschaftswunder • Result: emotional distance towards their own past as responsible actants involved in Nazism (‘de-realisation’). • Insistence on innocence and own suffering in 1950s.

  10. SigmundFreud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ • Mourning • Process of working through loss • ‘erinnern, wiederholen, durcharbeiten’ (Freud) • Letting go – • Ability to re-cathect • Melancholia • Refusal to acknowledge loss • Denial, repression • Internalisation of lost object • Melancholic subject remains frozen in time • No letting go

  11. Student Movement • Shock of Auschwitz-trial 1963 • Große Koalition (Kiesinger and Lübke: ex-Nazis) • Come to see older generation as ‘perpetrators’ – breaking off of dialogue • ‘Trau keinem über 30’ • RAF: ‘Ihr könnt nicht mit Leuten reden, die Auschwitz gemacht haben’ (G. Ensslin) • Post 1968 German Left: focuses on Nazi perpetration and Nazism’s victims

  12. Politicisation of German Memory Discourse • Denial and Repression • Trauma: dehistoricises • Political instrumentalisation of traumatic experience by Right Wing (Bund der Vertriebenen) • Kollektivschuld as instrument of denial • ‘Aufrechnung’ – Settling of Accounts-mentality

  13. Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern • Reflexion in Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun and Sanders-Brahms’s Deutschland, bleiche Mutter? • Deutschland, bleiche Mutter as film coming out of the student movement re-engaging with parental suffering? • Representations of parents as perpetrators or victims?

  14. War and gender • NS – inflated masculine values • Defeat: destabilising of masculine identity • War: home front results in increasing female self-confidence • What happens when the two meet? • Effect on children (education) • ‘Da ging der Krieg innen los’

  15. Style & Form • ‘new German Cinema’ • Style in relation to subject matter • Verfremdungseffekte • Epistemological scepticism?

  16. Political instrumentalisation of traumatic experience • Victim discourse in hands of (far) right – inflated numbers of ‘German’ victims (e.g. Dresden) • Discourse of responsibility for NS and Nazi victims in hands of (liberal) left (Gruppe 47, Student movement) • Neo-Nazi Party NPD in Germany active with success in early 1960s (9.8% 1966-69) • After 1990 NPD successful in East and West German Länder (Niedersachsen, Sachsen) • 2005: NPD leaves Landtag in Saxony during minute’s silence for Holocaust in protest • NPD: ‘Bombenholocaust’ with respect to Dresden

  17. Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV) • Founded in 1957 • Represents expellees • Political pressure group with own ministry until 1969 • Refuses to acknowledge the loss of Eastern territories • Argues expulsions after 1945 against international law • Ex-Nazis in high positions (but also SPD-members) • Willy Brandt’s ‘Ostverträge’ 1970 effectively sidelines BdV • 1990 settlement with Poland re: Polish Western border • Since 2000 lobbies for ‘Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen’ to be built in Berlin • 2005: Angela Merkel’s government decides to build ‘Zentrum’

  18. Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen • At heart of ‘Berlin Republic’ – like Holocaust Memorial • Modelled on Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington • Claims to be about all expulsions of 20th ct (e.g. Turkish-Armenian genocide 1915, Turkish-Greek expulsion 1920/21, German expulsions after 1945) • German expulsions separated spatially from others • Effectively a ‘national’ memorial for German expellees • Highly controversial with Poland & Czech Republic • SPD-government said no, Merkel said yes

  19. Michael Verhoeven’s Das schreckliche Mädchen (1989) • Based on ‘true story’ of Anna Rosmus • Born 1960 in Passau, Bavaria • Participated in essay competition with topic on her home town in 3rd reich • Published Widerstand und Verfolgung in Passau 1933-1938 in 1983. • Received Geschwister Scholl-Preis in 1984 • Left Passau as result of hostility and death threats – lives in US since 1994.

  20. Das schreckliche Mädchen • ‘Uns ist in alten maeren, wunder viel geseit’ • The Nibelungenlied (early 13th ct) • Richard Wagner (1813-1883), Der Ring des Nibelungen, 1948-73

  21. Heinrich Lübke, Bundespräsident 1959-69 • ‘zu weit nach rechts gegriffen’ • Richard von Weizsäcker, Bundespräsident 184-94 • ‘zu hoch gegriffen’ • Carl Carstens, Bundespräsident 1979-84

  22. Das schreckliche Mädchen • Form and style – how does the film use Verfremdungseffekte (and why?) • Use of comedy and satire • Image of (Catholic) Church & Bavarian society • Representation of time (as in passing historical time) • Ending.

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